Paenitentia
by wyoluvr
Summary: "Joy or penance he feeleth none." --Chaucer.


Title: Paenitentia  
Author: Criss Moody [wyoluvr@yahoo.com]  
Date: May 24th, 2002  
Distribution: List archives, my site (ficbitch.com/hpf), Lar if she so desires. Otherwise, ask.  
Disclaimer: Joss is my God and I shall not want.  
Summary: "Joy or penance he feeleth none." --Chaucer.   
Characters: Willow, Giles  
Spoilers: Through the Buffy season 6 finale, 'Grave'.  
Rating: PG-13.  
Notes: Kisses and love to my tinkerbunny for the beta. Love to Kass for offering. And thanks to Donna and Jess for giving a low-on-ego writer a little boost. 'Paenitentia' means 'penance' in Latin. I can be pretentious in many languages, yes indeedy.  
Feedback: High, low, pos, neg, I take all kinds.  
Improv #43: beam, color, dead, fairy 

"I expected better of you." 

Giles spoke quietly, the vibrancy of his presence echoing in those words. All the things he didn't say in all those months he hadn't been there. For her. For them.

"Yeah, well, I expected better of me too." Willow's smile went crooked and then fell flat. Her pale hands curved around the porch railing.

Air rustled the leaves of the trees surrounding them. Children giggled at the park down the street. Car doors slammed, dogs barked, planes flew overhead. Bright sunlight bathed the lawn.

"The police ruled her death an accidental shooting. According to Warren's parents, he'd been in and out of the house for weeks. Who knew why he killed a girl he hadn't even known?" 

Her fingers traced the carved circular ridges. Around the fat lip, into the crevices. A single sunbeam bisected her face.

"The EMTs swear that Buffy could not have walked out of that emergency room. But this is Sunnydale. The dead, dying, and wounded have a habit of walking away." 

Giles coughed and raised his hand to his mouth. Patted it as if he were keeping words in, restraining everything that couldshouldmightwould be said.

"And what now?"

"Tara's going to be buried next to her Mom. I'll go down…later. I guess."

"You know better than that, Willow."

"Do I?"

Her pupils still bled into the hazel irises. Nothing is ever truly destroyed, just converted into another form. Power remained.

Raising his hand to Willow, Giles gripped her shoulder. Ever so lightly. Not tight enough to hurt or bruise.

"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry?" Willow's voice dropped and went raspy.

"Are you?"

Silence snapped between them like a raw, vicious creature. Waiting for the wrong words to crack and ruin. 

"If it does any good, yes. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry she's dead I'm sorry he's dead I'm sorry he killed her I'm sorry I killed him I'm sorrysorrysorrysorry…." She rubbed her cheek against the smooth white column. Her eyelids flickered shut as tears flooded out, washing her face and hands of the residue left by all that happened. Residue from knowledge of what she'd done and seen and would still have to do.

Hands curled around both her shoulders and brought her into Giles' chest. She burrowed there like a small cat looking for a safe, warm place. Giles spoke soothing things, things that he would have told his own children if he ever had any, and rubbed her back. When her tears eased, her hand crept up to rub at her face, and Giles spoke.

"I'd like you to come back to England with me."

Startled, Willow bumped backwards into one of the porch's columns.

"What?"

"Er, not you. Not just at first. I was thinking that all of you could come. For a short period. Dawn's never left the country. And we could all use…a rest. But then, perhaps, you could stay."

"Giles, how, I don't understand."

As he handed her a white handkerchief, his hands dove into his pants and he looked out at the back lawn, still stained by Buffy's blood.

"I've spent quite a bit of time with a powerful coven in Dover. Their seer foresaw your descent into darkness. And she felt that if you could be brought back from the edge, you could be taught to use your power responsibly."

"I thought…" Willow rubbed her arms briskly. Crossed the porch, the lawn, and sank into a deck chair. Giles followed, sitting down on the edge of the neighboring chair.

"You thought you'd return to 'magical rehab'?"

A reluctant grin graced Willow at Giles' words. "Well, yeah. Not so good with the control here."

"Perhaps it isn't a question of control so much as knowledge." He scooted his chair closer to Willow's and his voice took on that tone Willow knew so well. He was in his element explaining the how and why of the supernatural.

"Willow, you are immensely powerful. And I frankly blame myself for not directing you to a capable teacher once I saw just how powerful. I thought I could keep an eye on you but I never really did. I left you to learn magic on your own, scolded you as if you were two whenever you expressed interest in my help or guidance, and let things like your forgetting spell pass by with no more than a 'don't do that again.'" 

His hands glided and swooped between them and Willow struggled to keep her attention on his words. The scars on his hands held far more interest. They were such stories and Willow wanted to hear them. Feel the raised scars, the places where skin had been scraped off, and know this man better. 

"It's not like you knew what would happen." Not like you saw me rip flesh from muscle. Flick of power to incinerate and then she'd been a killer. Simple. It'd felt good.

"I should have. I saw myself in you. And I let that color my reaction." He rubbed his hands together, fingers rubbing at a large, raised scar on his right hand. "I also saw Ethan Rayne in you."

Pleasure and disgust coiled into an unhappy mixture in Willow's belly. She didn't want to be like him. But she was, wasn't she? She had his arrogance, his joy in using magic for magic's sake. 

"So I'm a power-mad selfish witch?"

"Not precisely." That wry smile that could mean many things. Or nothing at all. "I used magic because it was fun. It served as a means to an end. I hurt others and myself. Ethan started using magic because he was very, very good at it. And it gave him a measure of power over his world that he'd never had. Once the end meant nothing to me, the pleasure and power that is, I stopped ritual magic almost entirely. Ethan, well, we know what happened to him."

Maybe Willow would end up lost in a military prison, forgotten by the people who put her there after they disbanded and fell apart. No, her pesky best friends would probably break her out. Try to rehabilitate her. They'd never let her go. The irony made Willow choke. Sometimes people were better left alone.

The kitchen door opened and Willow had her head tilted enough to see that a small blonde head leaned out and just as quickly snapped back into the house. If Will tried, she could see at least three heads crowded around the kitchen window. 

"Have you talked to, um, the others?"

"Er, no. This isn't really about them, is it?"

Everything was about them. Everything Willow held dear. Everything she'd ever despised. The sum total of her existence owed itself to them. 

Yeah.

"I suppose not."

"You don't need to decide now. Let a week or so pass. But I must be gone by the end of June at the very latest. Commitments, you know." Another flash of the wry smile and he rose.

"Would you like to come inside? Have a cup of tea?"

"No, that's okay."

"Alright then."

Giles walked as if he wore lead boots, each step carefully judged and taken. Without turning to really watch him, Willow studied the straight line of his back out of the corner of her eye. So true to who he was. How did he ever get that way? How did anyone get that way?

And who was going to show her? Ok, actually, any of them for that matter. Didn't look like the Scooby gang would win any awards for self-parenting these days.

"Giles?"

He stopped at the porch.

"Yes?"

"I didn't mean to do what I did to you. You were just…in my way and I had something I needed to do."

As close as she could come without saying she was sorry which she was pretty sure she wasn't. Not in a way that would ever make sense. Though it might to Giles. 

"I understand. I do." 

He turned with his back to the house and their eyes met. Willow broke the stare first, staring down at her hands in her lap.

"I think I might like to go. For the summer. At least."

She looked up again. Giles' face glowed with satisfaction. And maybe something that might have been pride if she'd seen it on his face a year ago.

"Good. Thank you. Uh, shall I tell the others?"

Let Giles take the burden and be the adult. Let him. Don't try to be grown-up, Willow, you fail. You'll always fail. She felt like a small fairy, trapped in glass cage and given one option. There is no 'try'. Just doing.

"No. We can do it together. But later. I want to sit here for awhile."

"Sounds lovely. I'll go see about my cup of tea then."

The kitchen door swooshed shut, ending with a heavy thud. A flurry of low-pitched voices faded into nothing but the sounds of every day.

If Willow stayed out the in sun much longer, she'd burn. She'd wait until time forced her friends to let life move on and stop waiting for Willow to come back to them. Sooner or later, she had to stop coming back because that was part of the problem, wasn't it?

Always faithful, always sure. Willow did the right thing. She studied the way the sun made her skin glow from the inside out. Maybe this time, it wasn't the right thing for them. It was the right thing for her. 

Using her power well wouldn't just help the world. It would make her strong. It would make yellow crayons and dead lovers hurt less.

Willow expected great things of herself.

~the end~

  
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